When people think of renewable electricity, they think of solar, wind and hydro. Yet sugar mills have been generating renewable energy from bagasse for generations.

Bagasse is the fibrous material that’s left over when all of the juice has been squeezed out of the sugarcane during the sugar manufacturing process.

Wilmar Sugar and Renewables is one of Australia’s largest generators of renewable energy from biomass. We burn bagasse at high temperatures in our boilers to produce steam. That steam goes to a turbine generator which is used to produce electrical energy.

Our eight sugar factories produce enough renewable electricity to be fully self-sufficient, with even more to share. We currently export enough electricity into the grid to power more than 60,000 homes for a year.